I don’t know how it happens but somehow there is always a shopping cart and a tire in places of poverty. This home was no different. As Sandy ( my teammate and year long volunteer for Hosea’s Heart) Betty ( a fifty something Irish woman who stays in Swaziland 4 months out of the year) and I walked into the home I started to take note of all that I saw.
– children all under the age of 7
– broken glass and bottle tops sprinkled around
– a smoldering fire
– two small rooms
I was told that the mother had 5 children. We were coming to investigate how bad the living conditions were in hope to give 2 of the girls an opportunity to stay at our home.
As we asked questions about where they girls were now there was no direct answer. We asked to see the home. I stepped into a room big enough to fit a full size bed and enough space left over to fit 3 people standing. This is where they all lived and slept.
The mother’s sister began to translate about what happens in the home. The father will come home drunk and beat the mother and sometimes the children. When he beats the mother the children sleep in the other room at the homestead. This room is as big as a shower with no door and one barred window. The children are feed once a day at school because normally there is no food at home.
Soon a girl named Angel at the age of 9 was called. She was dressed in a long sleeve shirt with a hood up and dusty dirty jeans, and Toms shoes (they had just delivered then the week above).
I was struck be her shyness. We asked her if she would like to come live at a home with her older sister (who we had yet to see) and go to school where all the other girls go to who live in the house. She only tightened her body, looked to the ground, and waved her Toms shoe back and forth. Her mother said something to her and she slightly nodded her head.
I can’t imagine what it is like to live like she has been living. I can’t not fathom how hard it must be to watch your father beat your mother. I for sure have no idea how it must feel when 3 white people show up to your home and ask if you would like to leave everything you know for a life promised with food and school.
There are so many other stories just like this one in Swaziland. God bless the Home of Hosea’s Heart. For God is using them to bring Hope to the Hopeless.
